Overview

Rosa Harning Lebensboym (1887–1952), known by her pen name Anna Margolin, was an American Yiddish language poet of Jewish descent.

      Born in Brest, then part of the Russian Empire, she permanently settled in New York in 1913. She worked on the editorial staff of the Yiddish Newspaper Der Tog, and was associated with the both “Youth” and “Introspectivist” Yiddish literary movements which came to the fore as Yiddish poetry soared free of religious and political content.

      She published a single volume of verse, Poems (1929) which is stylistically akin to that of Rilke, but unique in its engagement with Manhattan’s modern urban landscape, and her unambiguous description of love affairs with women.

      Besides the astonishing poetic quality of the work, the lesbian content is the most remarkable thing about it. She speaks with a candor not to be seen till the 1970’s, and thus effectively displaces Amy Lowell as the foremost poetic spokesperson of early twentieth century American Lesbianism. Although she wrote in Yiddish, her geography and experience are profoundly American, and are fairly to be reckoned as an undiscovered chapter of our national literature.

Intended Audience

A lesbian and feminist audience is guaranteed by the aforementioned content, which is unambiguous and erotic, while never less than refinedly poetic. It is also to be reckoned as a classic of Yiddish and Jewish literature: though Margolin was defiantly irreligious, she expresses herself in an idiom steeped in Biblical, Talmudic and popular Jewish tradition. She is also an American author, describing the American urban experience of the early twentieth century with an outsider’s insight that may call to mind the contemporary writings of Jean Toomer.

Comparable and Competing Books

Margolin’s book has been translated once in English, by Shirley Kumove, Drunk on the Bitter Truth, (SUNY 2005). This competent but colorless translation completely bowdlerizes the lesbian content.

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